The official Laravel Podcast started back in 2013, and so far it’s been through two “seasons.” The first ran from 2013 through February 2015, with a mixture of guests and topics. Then came season two, which started in March of 2015 with Matt Stauffer as the host and it introduced Taylor Otwell and Jeffrey Way as regular guests/co-hosts.

Today Matt has announced that the podcast is transitioning into its third season of life. I had the opportunity to sit down with Matt to find out what we can expect with this new season.

Matt answers questions about what you can expect from the show in the upcoming year, the shift to an "interview show" and when you can expect the new shows to be released. You can read Matt's answers to these and other questions in the full post.

The /Dev/Hell podcast, hosted by PHP community members Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler, has posted their latest episode - Episode #89: Selling Out.

Chris and Ed decided to push themselves out of their comfort zone and talked to Laravel community superstar Matt Stauffer. We talked about Matt’s experience writing a book for a major publish (with an animal on the cover and everything), asked the question “does consistency in code matter for OSS projects” and Chris sadly muted his mic while Matt and Ed discussed the Analogue NT Mini gaming console.

I recently asked Matt Stauffer, Partner and Technical Director at Tighten Co. to discuss his work with the Laravel community, including what makes the PHP framework great for rapid application development and how it interoperates with new and emerging frontend tooling. Matt is also the author of Laravel: Up and Running, which O'Reilly published in November 2016.

Matt answers questions about the Laravel framework (why it's for "web artisans"), using it for prototyping, upcoming features he's excited about and advice he has for those just starting out in web development. Check out the full post for the answers to these and other questions.

The Laravel News site has a post about the official release of a new Laravel-related book, "Laravel Up and Running" from author and well-known Laravel-er Matt Stauffer.

Matt Stauffer who has been blogging about Laravel since the 5.0 release, the host of the Laravel Podcast, and partner and technical director at Tighten.co has been working on a new Laravel book, Laravel: Up & Running, published by O’Reilly.

During my holiday I read an advance copy of the book containing all chapters expect the ones that touch on Laravel 5.3 specific functionality. I can say that it is very well written and it complements the official documentation well. Here are some of the things I’ve learned from reading this book.

His list of "lessons learned" includes topics like:

Sending a download response

Sharing a variable with all Blade views

Using closure based commands

Eager load the number of related records

Each one comes with a bit of code, mostly just one line (as that's all it takes) but it's interesting to see some of these handy tips and tricks to make it easier to work with the Laravel framework in your applications.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has posted their latest interview featuring a conversation with a member of the PHP community. In this latest show host Cal Evanstalks with Matt Stauffer in a recording from Sunshine PHP 2016.

Cal and Matt start off talking about his presentation covering going from "idea to application" quickly with the Laravel framework as the backend. They also talk about moving from Laravel if the need arises and some of the other tools in the Laravel ecosystem (like the Socialize package and Force/Envoyer for server management). They also talk some about the podcasting that Matt does (5 Minute Geek Show and Laravel Podcast) and they "geek out" over their gear. Matt also shares some about these shows and the motivation he had to create each.

If you're interested in the Laravel framework and possibly using it for your upcoming projects but aren't sure where to start, you should consider checking out Matt Stauffer's upcoming O'Reilly book "Laravel: Up and Running". According to this post on the Laravel News site the book is now available for pre-order.

Matt Stauffer has been writing a new book on Laravel named Laravel: Up and Running: A Framework for Building Modern PHP Apps and it’s published by O’Reilly Media. [...] This first edition is 250 pages and will come in either paperback or ebook form, but this current preorder is only available in paperback. Based on Amazon the expected shipping date is August 25, 2016.

The book walks you through the creation of a Laravel application from start to finish. it's no meant as a reference but a "work book" to teach the foundations of the framework. It hopes to provide a single point where developers, especially those familiar with "C-family programming languages", will be able to get started quickly.